Sunday, February 8, 2015

A few years ago, Homeland Security announced an incident in Atlanta, GA, where Amy Windom was victimized, but managed to send a life saving text message from her laptop using her toes. In an effort to mitigate the root cause, Homeland Security tried signing an agreement with Toshiba for alternative laptop keyboard designs allowing for hallux (toe muscle) deviation to make it easier for Amy or anyone else in this situation; but the Beta test failed.

After reading about the fail, I realized that it’s a good thing Amy is only 39 years old and has good eye sight. I set up my own simulation and couldn’t even find the keyboard with my toes. The first thing that happened was the mouse pad and external mouse hit the floor and joined the dust bunnies under the bed. When I tried to slide my big toe across the internal mouse to click on “Start,” to launch the IM software, I got a nervous twitch and hit the quick-scan on my virus protector, so I had to wait an hour.

Since I used my husband’s old police handcuffs to simulate Amy’s wrists tied to the bed post, I also had difficulty trying to grab the key with my other toes. It had taken a nose-dive with the mouse and was wedged between the night stand leg and the molding.

My cell phone was playing video games in the next room, indicating that family members had called about three times already.

I spit out my gum, mashed it into the wedged key with my left foot, and whistled for the dog, hoping that she would retrieve it for me. All she did was pick both up in her mouth and run out into the kitchen.

"Enjoy your Dentyne breakfast #$tch" I yelled.

I was stuck. It was only 11:00 am. I just laid there trying to figure out how I was going to explain this to whoever came home first.

I quickly thought of answers:

1. Some orangutan broke into our house and mistook me for Harry Callahan’s girlfriend.
2. I’m doing Top Secret research for Homeland Security?
3. I heard a somewhat religious domestic terrorist enter the house, so I figured I’d scare him off?

Mel Brooks’ “History of the World” was playing on the classic movie channel and my bladder finally gave out with Harvey Korman. I’m in the soup:

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About Me

Twitter: @rosevalenta Humor columnist.
Welcome to Rosie's Renegade Humor Blog. The word "Renegade" describes it all - seriocomic musings about current events, politics, sports, and humorous happenings from around the world. You know, "Skinny Dipping!"
I attend the bi-annual Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop at the University of Dayton, am one of the directors of the Robert Benchley Society, and the previous Membership Chair of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.
I wrote for a subsidiary of McGraw-Hill for 12 years, as a technical staff writer and freelanced for other industry publications. I took creative writing courses at Delaware Technical College and attended classes at the Philadelphia Improv Theater. Many of my articles are syndicated and have appeared in USA TODAY, Newsday.com, The Courier Post, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.

I am available for speaking engagements, please e-mail: ebww2014@comcast.net